


Writing Destiny- Deleted, Alternate, and Different POV Scenes

by lamesister



Series: Writing Destiny [2]
Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dimension Travel, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:09:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28869828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamesister/pseuds/lamesister
Summary: Deleted, alternate, and different POV scenes from the Writing Destiny series as a whole.Description in chapter title, may or may not be elaborated on in notes.Enjoy!
Relationships: Clint Barton & Jason Todd, Phil Coulson & Jason Todd
Series: Writing Destiny [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2081406
Comments: 15
Kudos: 104





	1. WD Chap. 4 - POV Coulson - After

“Show me the footage again.”

The agent looks up at him, “Sir. You’ve seen it four times.”

Phil looks at the man-- mussed blonde hair, tired brown eyes. Phil can’t blame him. It’s been a hell of a week. Stark went missing, Stane talks around issues with a bluntness that could be refreshing, but is just crass, and someone walked in and stole information from SHIELD without anyone batting an eye. 

And Phil himself let him go. Which makes it his problem. (He knew it would be.)

He sighs. “You’re dismissed, agent. Go home.”

“I- Sir!” The poor man protests, but is obviously eager to take him up on it. 

“I got it, go. I know how to work a computer.”

“I-- thank you, Sir.” The man gathers his things and leaves.

Phil runs a hand through his fraying hair and sits down. He rewinds the footage again, watching the man’s entrance all the way up to the elevator ride and his exit. He brings up footage of the coffee shop where the ping came back from when they were hacked just a few days before, and compares the footage. Another screen shows what they were able to pull up from surrounding cameras, and a candle store around the block. It’s hard to match the grainy photos, and the hair is different.

Phil’s pretty sure it’s the same man anyways. 

And Phil let him go. He’s getting kind of stuck on that, not that he didn’t take precautions. He looked into the young man’s eyes-- God, how old was he?-- and sensed no ill intent. A leashed violence, perhaps-- definitely (Phil felt the calluses, saw the easy way he held himself in his skin. It was absolutely tampered down, but Phil had the thought that if the man hadn’t wanted it to be seen, it wouldn’t have), and maybe some nervousness, but neither was too uncommon for young field agents talking to him. So he asked for the man’s name, putting him on the list of agents he’d potentially want to see in the field himself. (He can’t send his two best on every mission, afterall.)

So Phil let him go. And from what the technical department could find, he has potentially damaging information on Phil’s team, the Tesseract, and some of their more interesting projects. The techs were able to figure out what he had tried to search for specifically, even, and what they came up with was both odd and troubling. 

Aliens and the Avengers Initiative. Both which explain the information he left with. 

And Phil let him go. He would probably regret it if not for the last two times he followed a hunch like this he ended up with his best two agents. 

He’d been very angrily not yelled at by Fury, right after his meeting with Stane. 

Of course, his reply was, “I put a tracker on him. And-- It’s more about if he works for someone or if he’s doing this alone.”

Fury looked at him, slightly less cold and prompting, sending a message to the tech department about the tracker from his tablet. 

“If he’s working for an organization, then there’s more than one person interested in the information he lifted, and they potentially want to use it against us. We’d need to figure out who and why,” he explained, “If he stole it for himself, then we need to ask ourselves, why us and why him?”

“Either way, we need to figure out a motive. We need to know what they plan to do with what they learned. So what’s your point?” Fury looked at him pointedly.

“I put a tracker on him. I let him go, but I’m not stupid. An alert had just gone out that there was an intruder in the building. If he was an agent, no loss. If not… Sir, don’t send teams to apprehend him yet.” Fury managed to put more incredulity in one eye than most people could fit into two. “Let’s observe him, see what he does. Send me and Agent Barton in after we gather what we need.”

Fury observed him for a long moment. “Not Romanoff? Nevermind. You’re lucky I like you, Phil.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

Fury grunted, taking a seat behind his desk. “You can go. But Coulson? Your mess.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Phil watches the footage again, and pulls up the tracker’s location alongside it. It’s been at its current location for an hour, so he flags the location for observation.

He really hopes his hunch won’t prove wrong this time.


	2. WD Chap. 6 - Alt. - If Jason Could Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chap. 6 - Alt. - If Jason Could Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written before I had written Chap. 4, lol (Chapter 4 was a monster to write.) Actually, after the first two chapters, this was one of the first scenes written.

Jason comes out of the bedroom of the apartment he had been staying at in a hoodie and sweats, yawning, to find a suit standing in the kitchen-dining-living area with a pleasant smile on his face. He has his gun raised, aimed, and off safety before his hairs raise and he wishes to hell and back he carried a second on him to sleep. A second guy, a blonde, comes out of the shadows with a bow and arrow, like some rip-off Green Arrow. 

Jason feels like he researched him. It takes him a second. This is _Hawkeye_ , Clint Barton. That would make the suit Phil Coulson. Barton’s younger than he would have thought, but probably older than Jason by a few years. It’d be an interesting fight.

“Aren’t solicitors supposed to knock?” he asks, voice gravelly. He’d bet every dollar he’s stolen and had since arriving in this universe that both of them knew ASL. There wasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell of him tossing about that current weakness, though he knows the red scar is visible for all the world to see in what he’s currently wearing. 

“We might have, had you lived here legally,” the Coulson answers calmly, utterly unworried about the gun pointed at him. “I’m Agent Phil Coulson, and I work for the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division.”

“Your friend?” Jason asks, headed jerking in Barton’s direction. 

“Hawkeye,” Barton answers. 

“Security?” Jason asks because he genuinely wants to know. He needs to know it’s flaws for next time.

Coulson starts, “I am here to talk to you about the events that transpired a few days ago.”

“That all?” Jason almost laughs, “Not what I was expecting,” he grounds out. By now he has spoken more words in the past minute than he has since arriving at this universe. 

Hawkeye, he thinks, usually tag-teams with Natasha Romanoff, Black Widow. He wonders if she’s hanging around. If she shows up, his chances of winning, should it come to a fight, go down by a lot.

“What were you expecting?” The question, asked like that, seems innocent enough. To Jason’s ears it’s a trap for an early confession. 

Jason shrugs. Despite the arrow aimed at him (shoulder, it’d be a bitch to recover, but nonlethal) and the sense that the team’s third is hanging around somewhere, he lowers his gun. “Tea?”

Barton lowers his bow, “Got coffee?”

Coulson doesn’t sigh, exactly, but a twitch in his shoulders conveys the same message. 

He does have coffee. He’s not making any. “Tea or nothing.”

Barton pouts a little, “Sure.” Jason almost makes coffee. He resheathes his arrow in his quiver, but doesn’t let go of the bow. Jason clicks the safety on his gun back on and sticks it in his waistband. The motion makes him cringe. 

Coulson shakes his head when Jason lifts a plastic cup at him. He doesn’t have any mugs. “Can you answer some questions for us, Mr…?”

Jason almost says Red. In fact, it’s on the tip of tongue, when he abruptly changes his mind and says, “Jay. Here?” He turns the oven on, filling a thrifted pot with water and placing it on it, and waits for it to boil. 

“Mr. Jay,” Coulson says like doesn’t know perfectly well that it’s not his name, “we would prefer--”

“--You know, I _could_ be a Ms. Jay. Or Mx. Jay. You didn’t ask.” He watches the water as it slowly starts to bubble in his peripheral, Coulson and Barton are taking the spotlight of his vision. His throat is absolutely killing him and he distantly wonders if he’ll even be able to drink the tea without feeling sick. 

Barton’s eyes fill with mirth, though he shows no signs of it anywhere else. 

Coulson nods his head, but to the side, in a kind of _you have a point_ motion. “Do you go by pronouns other than he/him, then? Both Hawkeye and I go by male pronouns,” he adds. 

“Nope,” he replies, popping the p. “But it’s polite to ask.” He takes the pot of the stove, turns the stove off, then adds two honey lemon tea bags to the hot water. 

“You didn’t.”

“I’m not polite to people who break into where I sleep.”

“We would prefer for you to answer our questions in our facility,” Coulson finally gets out, ignoring Jason’s last comment. Prefer, will take you in if you don’t cooperate, semantics. 

“Of course,” Jason nods, “after tea. And after I get dressed,” he tacks on. He resists the urge to rub at his throat, which throbs with every heartbeat and word spoken.

Coulson agrees, probably suspicious as to why he’s being so agreeable, and the pair watches him. He watches them in turn. They pass the next four minutes in awkward silence while the tea steeps.

His internal clock dings at four, and he pours the tea from the pot into two plastic cups. A little splashes onto the surface of the counter. He passes Barton his, takes a sip of his own, and sighs as it washes down his throat. 

He swings his thumb towards the doorway behind him, “Going to get dressed.”

Couslon smiles pleasantly. Jason almost believes it. “Of course. Make it quick.”

Jason hums in response, retreating to the room, and locking it behind him. He lets out a breath. 

He takes a glance around and shucks off his clothes, setting his gun delicately on the bed within grabbing range. He dresses in his armoured pants and boots, making sure his harddrive is tucked in a hidden pocket in his pants. He wonders if his armoured top would be too much. Probably. He slips on a thrifted shirt instead, followed by his hoodie and then his jacket. 

He glances at his thigh holsters. He shrugs to himself; if they want him to be unarmed, they’re going to have to ask. He does only wear the one, though, and slips the same gun from earlier in it. He pats himself, going over his mental checklist. He has his knives (not all of them), his harddrive, and one gun. He has his cash, too, and his Ankh (because that’ll never leave him, apparently). He leaves his mask behind. Depending on the several ways this could play out, he might not come back to his apartment. He also might get all his things back. He really wants his things back. He’s going to need to be on his verbal A-game. 

He chugs the rest of his tea, unlocks the door, and returns to the kitchen-dining-living area. 

Both Coulson’s and Barton’s eyes flick to his gun. Barton’s holding his tea, but it looks untouched. 

Jason tilts his head at their silent question and raises a brow at the full cup.

Barton shrugs. 

“Not poisoned. I’ll have it if you won’t.”

Barton tilts his head slightly, studying him. He then proceeds to tip his head back and chug the whole thing. 

“Hawkeye,” Coulson calls. 

“What? We saw him make it. He had his own. I figured you’d save me quickly enough if it _was_ poisoned.”

Coulson gives Barton a _look_ , then returns his gaze to Jason. It reminded him uncomfortably of some strange mix of Bruce and Alfred, and yet simultaneously like neither. “Ready to go, Mr. Jay?”

Jason nods. They walked down the stairs of the apartment building, several floors up. He questions why they hadn’t asked for his gun when they reach the bottom and Coulson says, “Your firearm, if you wouldn’t mind.”

It’s harder than it should be to hand it over. It’s custom, with an ambidextrous trigger. And it’s not like he’s _unarmed_. And even if he was, he himself is a weapon. It _shouldn’t_ be hard. It still twinges somewhere in his sternum as he hands his gun over anyway. 

“And the rest of your weapons?”

Jason tries not to stiffen, glancing between Coulson and Barton. He tilts his head at them, eyes narrow. _Damn._ He tries to reason with himself, the not completely irrational fear of being disarmed warring with the knowledge that this _is_ what he’s trying to do. He smiles at them, edges a little jagged and sharp. “‘Course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, and that’s where I had stopped writing, pre-rewrite, soooo. Yeah.


	3. WD Chap. 8 - POV Natasha - Post-Assessment Debrief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chap. 8 - POV Natasha - Post-Assessment Debrief

Nat walks into the viewing room, sweaty and flushed. Coulson and Clint both look up from the screens as she walks in. 

“Well?” Coulson asks. 

She takes a seat next to Clint, pulling the chair out so she’s across from Coulson. “He’s good,” she acknowledges, “He knows a minimum of a dozen martial arts and combat forms. One of which is unfamiliar to me.” Both of them glance at her at that. “He can fight nonlethally perfectly well. The reason he slipped up with the assessor is because he held back. The man got the advantage on him, and his body reacted instinctively.” 

She pauses, assessing Coulson and Clint’s reactions. They don't look off put, if a little surprised by her words. 

When neither adds anything, she continues. “Ashla learned from me. Within the hour, he analyzed my fighting pattern and cherry-picked specialty moves that would suit him best. Each spar lasted longer. In the future-- if we keep sparring together-- it’s very possible we’ll be evenly matched.” 

Maybe they won’t have quite the same skill level, not a lot can beat out the sheer amount of dedication put into creating what Natasha is, but Ashla has both height and weight on her, and by then he’ll likely be comfortable with her fighting style. And she, his, but Natasha appreciates someone who is still learning and able to hold their own against her. 

Coulson raises an eyebrow, looking faintly surprised, but ultimately pretty accepting of that statement. 

Clint, the disaster, snorts, squinting at her in _mostly_ mock disbelief. “He’s better than me, hand-to-hand anyway. I mean-- I could absolutely hold my own, and there’s still the not-so-small chance I’d win. --It’s like fifty three--forty seven, in his favour. Even fight, really,” He cuts hand through the air, “Anyways, I’m definitely better long-range than him.” He nods to himself, then makes a face of exasperation. “What is it with you sad, beautiful, youthful assassins? Huh, Nat? Why can’t I be sent to kill some graying and amoral forty-year-old assassin with tattoos and an eyepatch or cybernetic eye or something with a penchant for poisoned bullets? Huh? _That_ would be cool.”

She rolls her eyes at him and looks to Coulson instead, whose whole body language reads resigned. 

Nat takes pity and continues her analysis, “He’s been training for years. Not for his whole life, but at least since his preteens, maybe more. He enjoys fighting, but he rarely fights for fun.”

Coulson watches her. “Do you think he means SHIELD or others any ill harm?”

Nat’s not surprised that he wants a second opinion other than that of the one who took his psych assessment. Clint had him once, and came out of the whole thing irritated and with irregularities scattered all over his report. Natasha wonders why she used him for Ashla’s assessment knowing this, but decides that Coulson could have gone in there himself and probably gotten the same results, so it rather didn’t matter who did it. Nat, though, would be able to read what Ashla didn’t say-- or sign, as is the case.

“No,” she answers, “If he wanted to be a threat to SHIELD, he would be. I think he wants to be here.”

“Why?”

“...He wants to do good. But he’s running.” She tilts her head, “SHIELD can offer him the former and protection for the latter.”

“He doesn’t know he’s running from the people he ran from?” Coulson knows better than to sound skeptical, but the language conveys the same message.

Natasha looks at Coulson, _really_ looks, “Knowing you’re got away doesn’t necessarily mean you got out.”

They were, after all, still on the lookout for members of the Red Room.

(Not to mention they all had nightmares of their own demons.

Were you ever _really_ away when it lingered?)

They grimace in grim agreement, reading the subtext to her words.

Natasha glances at the screen, where Ashla is greedily finishing off a bottle of water. “Did he say that not all his trainers were dead?”

Coulson nods. “The information he gave wasn’t very helpful to the tech department, though, but it’s only been a day. You think they’ll come after him?”

“Maybe. If they think he’s alive. One doesn’t put that much effort into a weapon to be content when they lose it.”

Coulson looks at her as he thinks. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Clint reading things not said in their conversation. “We’ll deal with it when it’s a problem, then. Based on that wound, they surely _tried_ to kill him.”

“So are we getting a new team member?” Clint says in the lull of conversation, “‘Cause, like, Coulson, you’re starting to get a reputation for adopting dangerous children. Agents won’t shut up about it in the halls. Unless, of course, they see one of us walking by.”

“Romanoff?” Coulson says, the one word asking all of if that’s all she has to say on Ashla.

Natasha smirks, rather thinking the kid reminds her of Clint. _Dangerous children indeed._ Not to mention that Clint is older than her. “Ashla’s not going to tolerate being penned up. I believe it is in everyone’s best interest to use him and his skills. Otherwise, he’s just going to leave and we’ll lose a valuable asset.”

Coulson raises an eyebrow, “Just leave?”

“He’s not going to give you a full repertoire of his skills, Coulson,” sarcasm dripping of her words, “He doesn’t trust you. I doubt he trusts anyone. If he can break in and out of a SHIELD facility without being caught, he can probably find a way out.”

Coulson’s too put together to drag a hand down his face. Natasha’s willing to bet he wants to. “I’ve already talked with Fury,” which is remarkably forward-thinking of Coulson, and not a dot out of character, “He said if he passes your analysis, then he’s cleared for the team. So?”

“He has issues. He’s angry, paranoid, intelligent, and despite his remarkable compliance with you so far, definitely not one for authority figures or rule following. But he seems to know his limits. Barring, maybe, his anger.” (Paranoia, of course, excluded.) “He’s intelligent,” she says again, “quick on his feet, and a skilled strategist. Like I said, it is in everyone’s best interest to use him and his skills. Tell Fury I give Ashla the green light.”

Coulson nods. 

Clint looks at her contemplatively, “Is Jason Ashla his real name?”

She pauses and thinks it through, “As much as Natasha Romanoff is mine.”

Clint nods, her response all the answer he needs. “So, we’re getting a new team member.”

“We’re getting a new team member,” she agrees. 

It is certainly going to be interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh, like, super unbetaed. I’m tired and it’s not late and life and writing have both gotten away from me.
> 
> Never fear! I write still.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
